Are you finding it difficult to sell affiliate products on your website or blog? There is little doubt that affiliate marketing presents an excellent opportunity to make money online, but it is never as easy as anyone thinks. On the one hand, you’ll find a lot of online or affiliate marketers who are earning a six- or seven-figure income by selling affiliate products. On the other, there are many who are unable to make only a few sales even after trying really hard.

Given below are seven potential reasons that you should watch out for if you are unable to earn a good income from affiliate marketing.

1 – Your Products Are Too Expensive!

Many online marketers will have nothing but on their minds. In order to make more money quickly, they choose expensive affiliate products to promote. Actually, the price range will vary depending on the characteristics or the traits of the target audience. If you aren’t selling enough affiliate products, you need to take a quick look at the price of products you are trying to sell.

If you see that the products you are promoting are too expensive, you should pick those products that are low cost. If you have an established site with a good amount of traffic, you can quickly increase the number of sales by choosing low cost or cheaper affiliate products.

Even if you are selling low cost products, you’ll earn a good commission because you’ll get more sales on a high-traffic blog.

2 – You’re Selling Non- or Semi-Relevant Products

In desperation to make more money quickly, many people will start promoting or selling even those affiliate products that are distantly or not related at all to a specific niche. There’s a simple question – ‘Why would a target audience want to purchase a product they don’t actually need?’

Whether you are just starting out or have spent some time in the affiliate marketing industry, never get swayed by hyped products that have little or nothing to do with the niche you come from.

3 – You’ve Not Used the Product Yourself

If you are trying to sell those affiliate products that you have not used yourself, you’ll be less likely to get more sales. One of the most important rules in affiliate marketing is to know a product really well before you want to sell it. When you have used a product yourself, you’ll also feel more confident to promote or sell the same. Without using a product yourself, you’ll never know whether it’s good enough to be promoted to an audience. Low quality products will also reflect badly on your reputation, killing your sales in the long-term.

4 – You Don’t Have a Compelling Story

Your target audience needs to be told a story, which inspires them and encourages them to go ahead and make a purchase. If you are only selling a product, you’ll hardly sell. If you are selling an experience, you’ll sell more, and more. That’s one of the biggest secrets of successful affiliate marketers.

Before you want to pitch an affiliate product to your audience, try to come up with an engaging story of your own. In this story, try to explain how using this product changed your life for the better. Talk about what makes this product really unique and different from others in the market.

So, craft a compelling story right now!

5 – You’ve Chosen a Wrong Niche

This can be yet another reason. Do you think you have chosen a niche that’s really profitable? If you aren’t selling any affiliate products even after trying hard, you may have stepped into a wrong niche.

Though affiliate marketing brings you excellent opportunities of making lots of money online, choosing a wrong niche will easily lead you to failure. While choosing a niche, you should pick one that’s less competitive yet offers a good market for selling products.

Most importantly, you should always choose a niche market that you know really well about. If you lack adequate knowledge about a specific niche, you won’t be able to sell products. It’s because you won’t be able to build trust or talk to your audience with authority.

6 – You’re Selling Too Many Products

It’s difficult to get a good number of affiliate sales also when you are offering too many products. Many affiliate marketers, particularly those who lack experience, think that selling tons of affiliate products will bring them more money. In fact, you’ll easily confuse your blog readers or target audience if you are promoting plenty of affiliate products.

Rather than joining every affiliate program that you think is profitable, you should become more selective. When you are promoting too many products, you’ll not be able to give the kind of focus each product promotion requires. By being selective, on the other hand, you’ll find it easy to focus more on the promotion of each of the products. So, you’ll make more sales.

7 – You Don’t Have a Good Sales Pitch

Also, you need to have a strong sales pitch or call to action. Though your audience will want to buy top quality products, coming up with good sales pitches will allow you to make more sales. If you want your readers to take a desired action, you must always ask for it. So, don’t miss it!

Do you promote affiliate products? Feel free to share your stories, experiences or tips in comments.Source by Daisy Graham Jones

What is an affiliate program?

An affiliate program is based on the agreement of two parties, called the advertiser and the publisher or affiliate. The advertiser pays the affiliate for every specific event, determined in advance. The affiliate places one or more ads pointing to the advertiser’s website, with affiliate code embedded in the HTML tracking every event. Some affiliate programs only use cookies as tracking, making them a potential target for cookie-jacking. There are a few different commission models available; some affiliate programs offer two or more ways of earning commission, but most programs have only one model available. If the affiliate program you are looking at isn’t using a commission model to your liking, there are numerous of other affiliate programs just waiting for you to find and join them.

How does an affiliate program work?

Upon joining the affiliate program, you will be given specific HTML code to add to your website. This code is used for tracking the visitors you send to the affiliate program. Different programs use different types of affiliate code; some allow you to change it it, some don’t. The most common way of promoting an affiliate program is by the use of affiliate banners. The affiliate simply puts one more more banners – with the tracking code embedded – on his website and hopes for his visitors to click the ads and buy whatever the affiliate programs are offering. Most affiliate programs have the option of using text links as another way of promoting the affiliate program, which can be a good way of promoting the programs. Text links have the upside of not looking like obvious ads, thus making them more likely to be clicked. If you are using an affiliate program where you get paid per sale, just having people click the ad won’t make you any money, they have to buy something as well.

What commission models are available?

PPS – Paid per sale

With PPS the affiliate gets paid every time he or she sends a visitor buying something from the advertiser’s site. The commission can be a fixed amount, or it can be a percentage of the order, often minus packing and shipping.

PPC – Paid per click

With PPC the advertiser pays the affiliate for every visitor delivered. This is often a flat rate, making the profits fairly easy to calculate. Most contextual advertising, such as Google adwords, use PPC as commission model.

PPL – Paid per lead

With PPL the affiliate gets paid every time he or she sends a visitor showing obvious interest in the product promoted. This can be pretty much anything from asking for a catalogue, filling out a simple form to signing up for the companies newsletter.

PPM – Paid per impression

With PPM the affiliate gets paid every time he shows the advertiser’s ad, most often a banner ad. The commission is measured per thousand, thus the M (mille) in PPM.

How to I get paid?

Most affiliate programs pay monthly, or twice a month. Almost all programs have a minimum amount you need to earn before you get paid. This amount can vary greatly, so look out for payout thresholds hard to reach. The payments are mainly done by check, but many use paypal or other online payment processors. Some offer wire transfers, but mainly restricted to higher amounts. When the payment is made by check, make sure the cost of cashing it in doesn’t eat up too much of your revenue. If you are using an affiliate program with a currency different from your own, cashing the checks can cost quite a bit of money and, as we know, the object is to make as much money you can.

Selling on Amazon Marketplace is simple. But bear in mind that there are other sellers there too. You need to use a few strategies to get an advantage. Think of your Marketplace presence as a shop. What can you do to persuade buyers to buy from your shop and increase your Amazon sales? Here are a few ideas:

1. Choose a good display name when you first set your Amazon account up

Your display name is your ‘business name’ when selling on Amazon, which shows at the top of the listing when buyers search for products. This can be your real name, or a made-up business name. Amazon Marketplace buyers tend to prefer professional- sounding business names rather than personal names. Try and include something that tells buyers why they should choose you rather than just a meaningless name. For example ‘FastBargainDVD’ might be a good idea if you’re selling DVDs.

Remember, if you already have an account on Amazon which you’ve used for buying the name might not be ideal for selling – so change it or open a new account.

2. Take advantage of the option to add extra information to your listing

Remember you can add up to 2,000 characters of ‘Comments’ to your listing. So take advantage of this. Give buyers some reasons why they should buy from you rather than anyone else. Remember, Amazon buyers are hot on product condition and good service. So something like the following can really make a difference: A1 perfect condition. We despatch daily by first class post, securely wrapped in bubble wrap.

3. List new as used

This is a real Amazon quirk. Strangely, it can be an advantage to describe new items as ‘used’. This pulls in buyers looking for a bargain since they will look at the ‘used’ listings for a product before the ‘new ones – ever if there is very little difference in the new and used prices.

Of course, it only works if you can afford to sell your item for much less than the recommended retail price. It is also not such a good idea if your item is likely to be bought as a gift.

4. Aim to sell at the lowest price

As with selling anywhere competitive pricing gives you an advantage. But it is particularly important when selling with Amazon because listings are presented to buyers in price order, cheapest first – unlike eBay where they are sorted by listing age. So it is a big advantage to get your listing at the top of the page. Sometimes cutting your price by just a few pence (e.g. £49.97 instead of £49.99) can get you at the top of the page.

If you can’t price at the lowest price try to choose a price that gets you within the top three listings. Also try and give buyers reasons why they should still buy from you at a higher price, i.e. you do fast delivery or (in the case of a used item) your item is in really good condition.

Good tip. If you are the only seller it’s still worth pricing competitively. This will discourage other potential sellers from coming in and undercutting you.

5. Send the goods ASAP

Because Amazon itself sends goods quickly Amazon buyers tend to be a bit obsessed with fast delivery. Amazon expects you to send goods within two days but you should try to do it the next or even same day if possible. If you can – state that you do this in your listing. It can get you extra sales.

6. Post products reviews

On Amazon, buyers can post reviews on the products they buy. These can be seen by anyone thinking of buying that product from any seller. This is a really great feature of Amazon that’s often under-exploited. As well as written reviews you can also post photos and videos if you want to.